Author: Elena Ma UNDP

BANGKOK — A new fund to boost smart affordable housing options in Bangladesh is one of the first major announcements from the UNDP’s SDG Impact Finance initiative — an enterprise that took UNDP’s David Galipeau four years to convince the U.N. it needed.

The United Nations Development Programme announced a partnership with nine leading universities to develop a research agenda that will better leverage private investment to finance the Sustainable Development Goals.

“The private sector in developing countries already account for 60% of GDP, 80% of capital flows and 90% of jobs. It bears logic that partnership with the private sector is actively factored in for financing SDGs,” she said at the meeting on SDGs.